Gardening/lawncare wouldn't work as well as you'd think - ride-on lawnmowers need fuel to run for extended periods, so they face the same charging problem (even though the client usually has a power outlet in their house, mere metres away). Ditto for a ton of pressurewashing equipment and such.
The problem is that we built our world around cheap portable energy, so problems that are trivial technically are difficult socially - the client won't let you use the power outlet, if they do they'll make you pay for the power use, asking is weird and unusual and requires more negotiating with the client, it's just not worth it. Like, if oil never existed then residential housing would probably be built with a special "contractor power outlet" that could be billed separately on a pay-per-use basis - call up the number, dial in your Designated Contractor Code or whatever fictional paperwork, and you get charged for the power you pull until the socket is unplugged.
Or maybe some other solution that I can't think of, because people in that world had to think of one and spent decades refining it. Or maybe they invented lithium batteries 90 years ago (~1935) and now they're on par with oil.
The problem is that we built our world around cheap portable energy, so problems that are trivial technically are difficult socially - the client won't let you use the power outlet, if they do they'll make you pay for the power use, asking is weird and unusual and requires more negotiating with the client, it's just not worth it. Like, if oil never existed then residential housing would probably be built with a special "contractor power outlet" that could be billed separately on a pay-per-use basis - call up the number, dial in your Designated Contractor Code or whatever fictional paperwork, and you get charged for the power you pull until the socket is unplugged.
Or maybe some other solution that I can't think of, because people in that world had to think of one and spent decades refining it. Or maybe they invented lithium batteries 90 years ago (~1935) and now they're on par with oil.